[@3Certain letters written by Lorenzo de' Medici are sold at auction.@1] They shall come in and chat, their purses hid, The men who hold rare things and gently smile, They shall disturb frail, musty sheets and bid A fortune for this letter or gray file Of parchment, nobly written by the hand That loved to gleam in gems and curious rings, Point out a man for death -- give castles, land, Or rest on ermined shoulders of tall kings And through the room, as from an unsealed urn, Shadows will drift, faint shapes of Florence -- dead, Born of these records men shall lift and turn, Knowing as he, who gave the artists bread For white madonnas, saints, God's cloudy throne, A man may buy what he can never own! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO MR. MONTGOMERY; OCCASIONED BY ... ATTACK ON HIS POEMS by LUCY AIKEN ODES: BOOK 2: ODE 5. ON LOVE OF PRAISE by MARK AKENSIDE SUBLIME ILLUSION by FLORENCE BROOKS SAINT PHILIP NERI AND THE YOUTH by JOHN BYROM TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. AS ONE WHO FROM A HIGH CLIFF by EDWARD CARPENTER |